


Of Freedom and Suffering

by taurpio



Category: Unsounded
Genre: Blood, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Metaphysical Bullshit, Other, Torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-28
Updated: 2020-01-28
Packaged: 2021-02-27 07:29:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,415
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22443355
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/taurpio/pseuds/taurpio
Summary: Unnamed teenager prisoner of Black-Tongue Delicieu decides to spend his free time waxing philosophy.Not a happy fic, not exactly a good approach to life in general. Please don't use this to validate a pessimist view on life, life is good!All the content warnings are there for a reason, and very real.Beta by laundryghost
Comments: 2
Kudos: 6





	Of Freedom and Suffering

Pain is a funny thing, really. It takes over your mind so easily. Forces itself upon your thoughts.

It becomes you, your needs, your wants, until you are nothing but pain. It is a state of ceaseless awareness, of obvious, unconscientious, implacable offense.

Other states of mind justify themselves so that they may subsist. Anger will make you see wrongs where there are none. The anxious will see any hint of danger as the source of their dread, instead of a result.

However, pain's single purpose is to stop. To stop at all cost. To make you consider all options to end it. Until it finally ceases to be. Yet it often still lingers, a permanent mark left, incapable of surrendering fully to oblivion.

How funny is that? Existence wishing nothing but to end. How absurd.

I am that I am, yet I am want that I am not.

You'll work on that.

Nothing to build out of pain. Nothing gained from suffering. Bricks that want to collapse, tools that want to rust, humans that want to die. How senseless; how wrong.

And yet, despite it all, pain is.

Your thoughts are interrupted, as the door opens in a violent crash.

You stand up in your cage, dressed in rags. The rush of air offers relief from the stench, bringing the metallic scent of Juste with it. Yet you do not feel relief. There is no relief in this place. Other children stand next to you, afraid. As your eyes adjust to the ceaseless light of Juste, you see the silhouette of a man.

He steps into the dusty workshop with heavy feet. The rays of light that masked his face slowly recede, revealing a worn face, twisted in rage. He lets out a barrage of insults against someone you do not know. He turns towards the cages, and approaches.

Despite all the anger in him, you can see his face change with every slow step. He was angry, now he is upset, now he is calm, now he is cold. As always, Delicieu only works with the same mask of practicality. He pretends, as best as he can, that he does not enjoy the pain he inflicts, that he doesn’t harm out of spite.

He scans the cages, trying to find the right rat for the experiment. The weakest apparently yield the best results, but they can’t survive the treatment for long. You know they won’t.

So you take a step forward. The only step you can make. The one freedom you are given.

He smiles for just a moment. Then opens the cage, and pulls you to the table. His hand is ice on your skin. Methodically, he binds you to the metal surface. Once it is secure, he raises a hand to the dying fireplace, and speaks.

You know that feeling very well. You’re not a wright; you cannot move the World. But after months of torture, you can now feel their spells through your scarred hands. You feel the seams of reality unwind, just a bit, as he speaks his strange tongue. He speaks orders, and the world obeys. No thoughts, no judgement, no freedom; the world simply does. Who could blame it?

In an instant, the fireplace dims, and your body catches fire. Every part of it screams. The pain is absurd, shocking, unacceptable. It’s there, self-evident. Begging to stop. It’s so easy to be strong until the pain comes, but now your bravery is forgotten. Your bravado is absurd in the light of this new clarity: how stupid you were just a second ago. This could have been someone else. You could have avoided this.

You scream. You scream for it to stop. For it to end. For death. You beg him to take the others. Not you. He speaks again and your voice dies in your throat, silenced.

The pain goes on, longer than ever before. His face twists slightly, revealing the monstrous thing behind the mask. Thoughts still emerge through the pain. You wonder why he would bother to hide his glee from you. How absurd. How human.

The fire doubles again. You are alone. Nothing but pain. Wishing to stop.

* * *

Delicieu is gone. You are still tied to the table. The other kids are sleeping. They know the experiments are over for the day. One of the two-toes is keeping watch as the others sleep. It doesn’t make sense to you, but there’s always one of them awake. You think it’s about pride, or love, or freedom.

You hear a creaking in the floorboards. When you turn, you see Bastion. He brought you water. You don’t know why. You drink. “He will kill you, you know,” he says, “the more you suffer, the more painful memories you make. Once you’re full, he’ll just kill you.”

You nod. He looks down, somehow saddened by your answer.

“I thought… I saw you volunteer. No one does that. No one ever did that. I thought you were… I mean I know you’re brave, but I thought you wanted to live,” he says.

You don’t react.

He looks at the new burned scars on your body, “this is not much of a life, is it.”

Bastion is not like the others. Delicieu wants to make a wright out of him. But first he wants to shape him like himself. If he knew Bastion cared for you when he's gone, you cannot imagine the torture he would inflict on the boy.

After a while, Bastion breaks the silence:

“I miss the real world you know, the real Khert. Where are the plants here? There are no animals here, except those fucking crows, and I doubt they’re even real. Everything is so… Shallow. Fake.”

A memory surfaces. A single sentence, carved on the side of a ship: “no one lives there, for no one is watching.”

“Why,” you ask, “why does he do it?”

Bastion doesn’t answer for a while.

“He’ll kill you to try and harvest the memories. Study any way to prevent you from dissolving. He thinks that if your memories are strong enough, they’ll coalesce, and that he can create new pymarics out of that. A new Material, with an endless supply.”

You know little about how memories work. As a child, the priests told you that when you die all memories dissolve into the Khert, locked in timeless vaults forever. That even if you could look into the vast sea of memories, you could never find the one you were looking for.

But you’re not in the real world. You’re in this shiny parody of it. This hellish place of constant light and meaningless rules. Where nothing grows, or rots, or changes. Where kids die and everyone turns their heads away. Where not even the Great Khert can see your thoughts, and gently store them forever.

“So he’ll kill you, either here to harvest it, or outside, to see how the Khert does it. But you’re not broken, you still volunteer. So he’ll keep on doing it.”

“Good to know,” you answer.

“You can't die!” he shouts. “If I go find the others, if they see this, they'll kill him. It can all be over!”

“Do you really believe it?” you ask.

His face darkens. He does not. He tried once, but some other wright just dragged him here, crying. You remember the screams that followed.

Bracing your legs against the shackles, you raise your aching upper body just enough to bring your lips to his. You kiss. He cries, and the salty tears burn your raw skin. But still you hold your head up. There is still so much they couldn’t take from you.

* * *

On the next day, you do not volunteer. You hide in the back of the cage, pretending to be scared. When Delicieu sees you, he is delighted.

He opens your cage, and asks you to step forward. You do not move. He threatens. You do not move. He shouts all the atrocities he will inflict on the others. You do not move. So he smiles again.

With a few strange words, the cage flies open, and you are thrown out of it. You collapse on the ground, and make no effort to move. No defiance in your actions. Let him kill you. Let him try once more to pry the world open, and fail. Because you are not pain, not yet.

You make the only choice you can make.

Waiting to not exist.


End file.
